Sonnets - circa Sept. 1907

                               THE MODERN SONNET

A sonnet I must write upon the spring;

     A sonnet full of something high and grand,

     In fact so high no one can understand.

Way up, exalted, and fleet of wing,

For naught except that now is just THE thing;

     The thing to do each budding time of year,

     When nature decks herself in green, to cheer

And cause a million poet fools to sing.

Nay, nay, it matters not just what it be;

     It may be of the buds, the germs, the slush,

     But in the sonnet form it must be seen;

Fourteen lines, ten stitches, which makes, you see,

     A sonnet true in form, tho’ full of gush,

     To be sent straightaway to a magazine.

JOE CONE.             

                             (From “Boston Courier”)

                              SONNET TO A COAL BIN

O, thou aunt and gaping space of black,

     Where lies the useless shovel on the floor,

     I’ve tried to fill thy chasm o’er and o’er,

But woe is me, ‘tis all in vain, alack!

I have neither to price, the strength nor knack.

     To feed thy hungry mouth I’ve labored hard

     And long; worked overtime, wrote by the yard,

And seldom has a manuscript come back.

Coal bin, or has been, thou couldst well be writ,

     Thou art too great a drain upon my purse;

     Methinks that I shall have to quit the verse

And drive a team or go to farming it;

     And if perchance I never rise to fame

     Coal bin, thy appetite were all to blame.

JOE CONE. 

                                   SONNET TO A COW

To thee I sing a song, O gentle cow!

     Standing beneath the chestnut’s spreading bough

     And chewing of thy cud, while on thy brow

Contentment lies. So meek thine eyes, I trow

Though couldst be naught but gentle, anyhow.

What tho’ thy horns are full of hooks, and now

     And then thy heels go up and out, and plow

     Furrows through space? Right here we must allow

Thou art a good and useful beast, O cow!

Butter of gold, and snow-white milk; I vow

To thee, old milky way, we all must bow.

     Thy cream de luxe in morning coffee, wow!

     Methinks that I can taste it even now

O cow, good cow, old cowy cow, cow cow!

JOE CONE.      

                                 SONNET ON DIALECT

Behold in dialect a sonnet rare;

     Yew never seen one like it done afore.

     Go s’arch the works uv all the marsters o’er

An’ yew will never fin’ one anywhere,

A dialectic sonnet writ with care.

Mos’ graceful form uv all the graceful verse,

     I take yew fur this classic lay uv mine,

     Becus, indeed, be yew the tree devine

Thet’s clumb by all the poets good an’ worse.

O, sonnet, sonnettee or sonnettum,

Gem uv the ages past an’ them tew come,

     I take my hard-earnt bunnit off ter yew,

     Ez Shakespeare, Homer, Shelly uster dew,

An’ call it quits at fourteen lines, by gum!

JOE CONE.             

                   (From Puck)           

                                   ON THE “NEW YEAR”

It’s here, it’s here, the new year full of cheer.

     Ring out the old and let the new appear;

     Kick all your old-time faults into the rear,

And tack a list of “resolves” there and here,

To read anew whenever you draw near.

     Ring in the new, I say, and never fear

     The gibes that may perchance ring in your ear

From those who hold not this resolving dear.

“Wring” out the old, “ring” in the new, tho’ queer

It seems to her whom you rung in last year;

     Rings are so cheap that one with income mere

     Might ring a maid each night, and still have change for beer.

Therefore I say ring; ring something out of gear,

While taking care to keep your own neck clear.

JOE CONE.             

                   

                              SONNET TO MY UNCLE

Dear Uncle Simon: I send you this note,

     And under separate cover also

     A parcel containing, as you may know,

A new and very costly, fur-lined coat,

About which once before to you I wrote.

     I do not need it now, dear Uncle Sime,

     As much as many other things, for I’m

Broke, hit, out of action and cannot float.

And so I turn to you, dear Uncle Sime,

     My only friend when I am thus hard pressed,

     And in your keeping let this garment rest,

For thirty days, at the end of which time

     I’ll call and claim my own. I’d like to raise

     About “fifteen” to go the thirty days.

JOE CONE.   

                                 SONNET TO A COLD

O, co’d, to you I meegly bow today;

     You ho’d me in your icy grib – ker choo!

     A’d hag a’d barg id ord that I cad do –

Ker choo, ker choo! By head id big, I say,

A’d any o’d balood. Plede go away

     A’d led me sleeb, or die, or edythi’g;

     Each time I breathe my node stards in to si’g

A’d squeeg worse thd them thi’gs the Dagoed play.

I guess I god the grib all righd, all righd,

     The way I feel today – ker choo, ker choo!

     My lood by job, but do’d care if I do;

I’ll get another wud a cussed sighd

     Better thad I god now. Ker choo, ker choo!

     I god the blam’dest co’d I ever knew.

JOE CONE.             

                                    AT THE PARTING

                                       (A Sonnet In Blank Verse)

“Alas! I never thought that you and I,

     Dear one, would part so very, very soon

     When first we met, ah, happy, happy day!

I clung to you for hours, my pearly teeth

Imbedded in your coarse and snow-white hair.

And then, one day, they took us hence, afar,

     Unto a boudoir, rare and costly, where

     They threw us down, and soon, alas! we knew

That we, sweetheart, had only met to part.

We met to part, to part and nothing more;

Alas! Alack a day, and nothing more!”

     Such were the words of deep despair, ‘tis writ

     Which young Alphonso Iv’ry Comb addressed

To stiff-backed Madame Angelina Brush.

JOE CONE.             

           Sonnet To Then And Now

It makes me laugh to hear the people say

     Times ain’t like they used to be at all;

     That they can easily enough recall

When folks could earn a higher rate of pay,

And thus lay up more for a rainy day.

The weather then comes in and gets a whack;

     “The winters that we’re having now, by jo!

     Ain’t nothing like we had some years ago,

In sixty-five, or maybe further back.”

And there is nothing just the same, say they,

That compares with the good, old by-gone day.

     But when I ask them if they’d like to see

     The old days here and now, they look at me

And shrug and haven’t got a word to say.

 Feb. 6, 1908